The overall theme is “Recharging Colorado”. This Explorer Series event (open to both ULI members and non-members) will take place at the new 1800 Larimer building, Denver’s first LEED-Platinum office tower. The first panel discussion will focus on “The Art of the Deal”… what it took to build 1800 Larimer. Hear from the project team (developer Westfield, architect RNL, contractor Mortenson, and anchor tenant Xcel Energy) about the vision and story behind Denver’s greenest building.

After the first panel, check out the fantastic views from the tower’s 20th floor while exploring the 1800 Larimer Exhibit Hall, where about 20 contractors and vendors who contributed to the city’s most energy-efficient building will feature displays and demonstrations of the technologies that went into the project.

Then, the second panel will focus on “The New Energy Economy and Job Creation” and will begin with a welcome from Governor-Elect John Hickenlooper, followed by an in-depth discussion about the future of Colorado’s green economy by top leaders from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Rocky Mountain Institute, Vestas, and the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation.

After the second panel, head back to the 1800 Larimer Exhibit Hall to enjoy the city lights and a cocktail, and to take a tour of some of the finished tenant spaces at 1800 Larimer. Finally, the event wraps up with ULI-Colorado’s legendary holiday party featuring plenty of food, drink, and music!

For all the details and to register, please visit this page at ULI-Colorado. See you on December 9!

RTD received word yesterday that they will receive $5.2 million through the US Department of Transportation’s Bus & Bus Facilities Discretionary Grant Program to replace 8 mall shuttles!

The new shuttles will be built by DesignLine of Charlotte, North Carolina. (Rendering above of the model of bus which will be used was provided by DesignLine and RTD.) They’ll be branded, just like the current mall shuttles – the exterior branding design is still undecided though, so that’s why the rendering is simply white. They will employ a state-of-the-art hybrid propulsion system and produce about 90% less exhaust emissions over the current shuttles, take advantage of a regeneration feature – a process in which electricity is generated by taking advantage of frequent braking action along the mall. This way, the shuttles can operate in electric zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mode about 50% of the time. Last, but certainly not least, these new shuttles will have both heating and air conditioning!

You should start seeing new mall shuttles out on 16th Street sometime next year.

RTD submitted 5 grants total – Broadway/Euclid Improvements (Boulder), US 36 BRT Buses, Downtown Distributor, Civic Center Station Rehabilitation, and the Mall Shuttle Replacement Project – in the Bus & Bus Facilities and Urban Circulators Grant Programs. Sadly, they didn’t receive any money for the other grants. But, some is better than none!

For a full listing of grant winners, check out http://www.fta.dot.gov/news/news_events_11820.html.

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Do you live in a fast house or a slow home?  Do you know how to tell the difference?  Though everyone reacts to design intuitively, most people do not know how to interpret it, or understand how it affects them.  If you have felt allured by design but unable to understand its language, Slow Home has an antidote for you.  And it has arrived in Denver.

After observing “a lack of understanding about the fundamental problems of the housing industry and a disconnect between the understanding that professionals learn and what builders are doing in practice,” John Brown, a professor of architecture at the University of Calgary, started Slow Home.  He recognized the need to raise awareness about good design, and hoped to foster widespread understanding about the importance of good design.

Brown came up with the idea of a “slow home” during a conversation about the Slow Food movement with his sister, a chef. He found that the more he developed the analogy, the more it seemed appropriate to explain the current housing industry in North America.  “I started to tell my clients,” he says, “that houses in suburbia are the fast food of housing – all standardized and homogenized.”  In the same way that Slow Food considers the source of ingredients, their composition, and the act of preparing meals, Brown’s Slow Home Project intends to raise awareness about the sourcing of materials for homes, the decisions that go into the design of a home, and its workmanship.

So what does the project do? At is foundation is the Slow Home Test, which Brown describes as a tool that gives people a skill set through which to understand design and evaluate design quality.  Fourteen indicators are weighted to add up to a possible twenty points.  Points are earned in the categories, “the house in the world,” “the house as a whole,” and “room by room.” Continuing the analogy of Slow Homes to Slow Food, Brown says, “until we knew about trans fats, we didn’t have a language to talk about the problems they cause.”  The understanding of the language of design afforded by the test allows it to be a tool to influence consumers’ buying decisions and to understand what could be improved in one’s own house.  It allows consumers to be educated about how to “vote with their dollars.”

Next, Brown took Slow Home on tour.  This is where Denver comes in.  Brown recognized a “sizeable online community” at theslowhome.com, and decided to put it to work surveying design in nine large North American cities.  Denver follows Los Angeles, Toronto, and Dallas.  Members of the online community evaluate floor plans of new houses in each city using the Slow Home test, in order to create a data set about the quality of new home design in the cities.  So far, 2,100 homes, in the categories apartments/lofts, townhouses, and single-family detached homes, have been evaluated.

The preliminary results about Denver “are essentially an inversion of the results from other cities,” says Brown.  In the apartment/loft and townhouse categories, the percentage of plans meeting Slow Home’s minimum design quality standards is lower than in other cities.  But in the detached single-family home category, in which the percentage meeting the minimum standards – thirteen out of twenty points on the test – is generally the lowest, Denver’s results are higher than other cities.  More than forty percent of new single-family homes surveyed meet minimum design standards.  Eleven percent meet standards to be considered a “Slow Home,” which Brown says is an impressive fraction – to be considered a “Slow Home,” a home must earn seventeen of twenty possible points on the Slow Home Test.  It must be well designed inside, well located, and meet environmental standards.  Seven percent of single-family homes in Dallas were “Slow Homes,” and just three percent of those in Toronto.  And Miami? “Miami is just out to lunch,” says Brown.

Brown attributes Denver’s higher quality of design of single-family homes to a citywide interest in the environment and in community.  There are several urban renewal projects in the city that are doing well, he adds, including the redevelopments of Lowry and Stapleton.  Whereas “in other cities, all the new single family houses are way out in the suburbs where no one cares about them,” these projects in Denver are closer to the center of the city, and are under more scrutiny than new suburban projects.  Their design was considered more carefully, and in turn they score higher on the Slow Home test, shifting Denver’s results towards slowness.

Brown asserts that where we choose to live affects our lives.  To illustrate this point, he turns to an analogy about shoes: “wearing a pair of shoes that doesn’t fit is unpleasant – it makes your life harder, not better.”  In the same way, buying a house that has a “large unused front living room, a garage that blocks the whole front of the house so that there’s no natural sunlight, or that requires you to commute two hours each day” will not improve your quality of life.  Brown hopes that Slow Home’s design education tools will allow consumers to demand better design.  It values not expensive design, but simple, intuitive considerations by developers.  “People who understand design will refuse to buy a house without front entry closets, bedrooms with natural light, or a walkable neighborhood,” he says.

“There are people doing good work,” he continues; and with the right tools, “people will see the differences.  It’s not about telling people they’re living the wrong way, it’s about providing entertaining, educational tools to be a more informed consumer.”

Anyone can join the entertainment and education at theslowhome.com, where Brown posts daily video design exercises including analyzing and comparing floorplans and voting for the Slow Home awards for the surveyed cities.  The Slow Home awards for good new design in Denver are viewable at http://theslowhome.com/slow-home-project/denver-wrap-up/#comments.  WashPark Green, the winner for a single-family home, is pictured below.

Seeing the B-Cycle stations installed around Downtown over the past few weeks has been exciting. Here are two that I pass on my walk to work:

As the B-Cycle website states, about 40% of all trips Americans take are less than two miles in length… perfect for a bicycle trip! B-Cycle gives Denver citizens another viable transportation option, and is one more step in the process of transitioning our automobile-dependent society into one that relies on multiple modes of transportation that are healthier and more environmentally and economically sustainable.

Here’s a map of just the Downtown locations. You can view an interactive map of all B-Cycle station locations on the B-Cycle website.

The Downtown Denver Partnership and the City of Denver are committed to improving the environment in Downtown for bicycles. Adding the B-Cycle program only reinforces that need and strengthens the argument for committing more of our public rights-of-way to non-motor vehicle uses.

From 2006 to 2007, Denver squeaked past Douglas County by a little over 100 people to have the highest numeric population gain in the state for that year, with an increase of about 12,500. Then, from 2007 to 2008, Denver topped second-ranked Arapahoe County by almost 5,000, gaining over 15,500 people that year. The numbers just released for estimated county populations as of July 1, 2009 has Denver gaining over 17,000 for the year, with Adams County in second place at over 11,000.  The City and County of Denver’s population has now surpassed the 600,000 mark for the first time ever.

Of course, the point isn’t really the county vs. county aspect of this. At some point in the future, El Paso County (and other counties as well) will pass up Denver County in population given that Denver covers only 155 square miles (a third of which is DIA) and must rely on infill development for growth, while El Paso County, for example, covers 2,130 square miles and is only about 10% urbanized at present.  The point is that Denver is growing in a significant way after several decades of decline during the era of peak suburbanization. This tells us we are on the right track. People are voting with their feet (or perhaps, their house keys). Denver does have some undeveloped areas left (e.g. Stapleton, Green Valley Ranch, DIA/Gateway), but clearly the city’s long-term source of population growth is going to occur through infill development and the densification of its Areas of Change (former industrial areas, the greater Downtown area, transit-proximate areas, etc.).  This is a good thing. Densification and urban infill is sustainable development at its most simple.

Scrap materials are sorted by type and recycled.  In this picture, you can see four of the seven dumpsters containing materials headed for the recycling plant.

As you saw in Update #4, the granite sidewalk is being removed along 16th Street and is being stacked on pallets.  Each stone has been labeled with the “address” of its place in the sidewalk.  As of this morning, nearly all of the granite, along with the familiar flower pots, trash cans and benches have been staged for removal to a nearby staging area.  They will be stored until that part of 16th Street is reassembled using the same granite slabs in a couple of years or so.

Controlling dust appears to be a top priority.  This street sweeper runs constantly for nine hours day up and down the two remaining blocks of Chestnut Street, one block of 18th Street, and three blocks of Wewatta Street.  The goal is to pick up dirt left behind by the departing dump trucks.  On Friday, I was walking on 18th Street, approaching  the new Union Gateway Bridge when I saw a Kiewit employee with a broom sweeping a sidewalk where nobody walks, on a street where nobody drives.  But the wind would find the dirt and blow it around the neighborhood if he hadn’t swept it.

Similarly, this yellow truck sprays water on the open dirt areas of the project to keep dust from blowing. On a windy day last week, I noticed construction workers shielding theirs eyes from a passing dirt devil.  The spray truck on was the spot within a minute.  Even with construction at a complete standstill over the Easter weekend, the spray truck was at work each day keeping the neighborhood free of dust.

In blog #3 about water systems, I mentioned that 10 dewatering wells pump ground water into the storm sewer.  Here’s a picture of the filtration tanks that ensure the water is clean before it heads for the river.

Since this is a transportation project, it is unconventional from the perspective of LEED Certification which is oriented to upright building structures.  In spite of that, the Kiewit Western Construction Company is attempting to gain LEED Certification for its work at Union Station with help from its sister organization, the Kiewit Building Group (commerical buildings) which also has an office in Denver.  Much of what I mentioned above is part of that effort.

I promised an answer to your questions about bad dirt.  I can tell you that the dirt is contaminated with coal dust.  No surprise, since the area was a rail yard for well over 100 years.  I still do not know exactly what is being done with the dirt, but I will work to find out.

Finally, I’ll share my favorite cleanliness story to date.  On the same windy day that I mentioned above, a worker climbed out of his front-end loader just as a piece of litter blew past his leg.  The wind carried it for 30-40 feet with him in hot pursuit.  He picked it up, stuffed it in his pocket, and went on his way … to lunch, I think.

Cities around the world have wisely built and maintained balanced transportation systems that include rail transit, cars, busses, bicycles, and a variety of contraptions in between. In the United States, we started out well, with streetcar systems (first horse-drawn, then electrified) running on the streets of just about every major city in the country. But then we abandoned all of that after World War II and went on an automobile binge that we have come to realize may not have been all that wise. Cars are awesome machines and the personal freedom they provide is phenomenal. But just like so many other things in life… too much of a good thing can be bad. So better late than never, cities across the US, including Denver, are bringing back rail transit to provide some balance to our transportation systems. It’s called having a diversified portfolio of transportation assets. I am proud of Denver for taking such a bold step in the right direction.

FasTracks is more than just an ambitious regional public transit program. It will also positively influence our regional land use decisions. Major employment centers, residential developments, shopping malls, and other land uses that draw or produce high numbers of people will be/should be located in the future along our transit corridors. That is one of the principles on which Denver’s regional MetroVision plan is based. It’s also common sense.

But let’s be very clear about what FasTracks is and what it isn’t. FasTracks is a regional transit system primarily designed on the hub-and-spoke model to move people from the suburbs into and out of Downtown Denver. Such a system is absolutely necessary and I wholeheartedly support the FasTracks program, as should you. But we also have to recognize that for those of us in Denver proper, FasTracks is only one side of the transit coin. FasTracks doesn’t provide Denver with the transit connections we need and desire within and between our denser urban core districts. That is where a new Denver streetcar system would come in, but that’s a topic for future blog posts.

If FasTracks alone wasn’t enough, we have the whole Union Station redevelopment to celebrate as well. Many cities destroyed their historic train stations or converted them beyond repair into shopping malls or festival marketplaces or whatnot. Fortunately in Denver, our Union Station remains intact and is now poised to once again serve as the rail hub for the city and region. Along with its associated private sector development, the Union Station project will complete the transformation of the Central Platte Valley as a dynamic transit-oriented extension of Downtown. Downtown Denver just keeps getting better and better…

The video, entitled Built to Last, was produced by the team of First + Main Media from Julian, CA and Paget Films from Buffalo, NY. Members of the team include John Paget, Dr. Chris Elisara, and Drew Ward.

Great video! Funny yet serious and gets the point across.

Source: US Census Bureau

This is a great sign that our core city remains the thriving heart of the region, and that through infill development and higher densities, we are achieving a more sustainable kind of growth.